The Other Side of the Night (20 page)

One of the first messages Cottam sent was to Philip A. S. Franklin, Vice President of the White Star Line in New York:

“YAMSI” was of course a transposition of Ismay, though why the Chairman of the Line chose to employ such a transparent subterfuge is anyone’s guess: he always signed his cables that way. No matter what the signature read, the contents of the message quickly became an object of suspicion in some circles, for there seemed to be something irregular about the haste with which Ismay wanted to get the
Titanic
’s crewmen—and himself—away from the United States. Ismay always maintained that his sole motive in sending the cable was to get the crewmen back to England as quickly as possible so that they could go back to work if they wished, because their pay stopped the moment the
Titanic
sank. Critics of Ismay then and since would be quick to point out that White Star could have kept their pay going, but such benevolence was of course alien to the nature of British shipowners. Given his colleagues’ overall level of avarice, Ismay’s gesture of repatriation was surprisingly considerate.

It has also been suggested that he was trying to evade American jurisdiction by spiriting the surviving
Titanic
crew out of the country, before any formal inquiry could be launched. Unfortunately for those who sought to pillory Ismay at any turn, this theory doesn’t hold up. Not only would Ismay, isolated on the
Carpathia
, have lacked knowledge that any such inquiry was pending in America (one was), but he certainly knew that a formal Board of Trade inquest would be called in Great Britain. It makes little sense to suggest that Ismay was trying to flee from the possible reach of one investigation only to fly into the certain arms of another. Nevertheless, the contrived signature coupled with the contents of the message would create a flurry of suspicion among the American press, eager as always to name a scapegoat regardless of the facts, and lead to Ismay facing a grueling three-hour cross-examination before a sub-committee of the United States Senate.

The Ismay tempest-in-a-teapot aside, there was very little real information available to an American press suddenly desperately hungry for any news regarding the
Titanic
’s fate. A series of garbled wireless transmissions from ships in the vicinity of the
Titanic
had left the newspapers thoroughly confused. With the
Carpathia
refusing to answer any queries, there was little hard information to go on, and the headlines the morning of April 15 were filled with varying degrees of speculation.

Only one New York paper seemed to grasp the enormity of the events unfolding in the North Atlantic. Sometime around 1:20 in the morning of April 15, the wireless station on the roof of the editorial offices of the
New York Times
received a bulletin from Cape Race in Newfoundland, which read:

The
Times
’ managing editor, Carr Van Anda, immediately called the New York office of the White Star Line, then contacted the
Times
’ correspondents in Montreal and Halifax in an effort to learn more. At the moment the facts were sparse, the situation unclear. About a half-hour before midnight (New York time), the Allen Line had received a transmission from their steamer, the
Virginian
, which had picked up one of the
Titanic
’s early distress calls and had altered course to rush to the stricken liner’s aid. The White Star ships
Olympic
and
Baltic
were also putting about, as were the
Birma
, the
Mount Temple
, and the
Carpathia
. Cape Race was monitoring the wireless transmissions between these ships as well as keeping a close watch on the messages coming from the
Titanic
. Cape Race had heard nothing from the sinking liner since 12:27 a.m., when a blurred CQD was heard, and abruptly cut off.

Van Anda had a good head for news, and quickly began reshaping the morning mail edition of the
Times
. The political feud between President Taft and Theodore Roosevelt which had dominated the news for the past three months and had originally been given preeminence on the front page was instantly relegated to the inside pages, and taking its place would be the accident to the
Titanic
. Van Anda sensed that a tremendous story was breaking, though at the same time a terrible dread began looming in his mind. At that point, the
Titanic
hadn’t been heard from in nearly an hour—as more reports came in, it was learned that the women and children were being put into the lifeboats and that the ship’s engine room was flooding. What Van Anda began to suspect was the worst—the “unsinkable ship” had sunk.

There was no confirmation yet, so the story Van Anda prepared for the early edition was cautious. He simply presented the bare facts as they were known at that early hour, as well as whatever information was available about the ship and her passengers. But the four-line headline itself shouted:

NEW LINER
TITANIC
HITS AN ICEBERG;

SINKING BY THE BOW AT MIDNIGHT;

WOMEN PUT OFF IN LIFEBOATS;

LAST WIRELESS AT 12:27 A.M. BLURRED

That would do for the morning editions, but now Van Anda decided to play his hunch: when the city edition went to press, it announced that the
Titanic
had sunk. It would be several hours before he would know for sure, but if he was right, then the
New York Times
would have “scooped” every other paper in the country—quite an accomplishment for a newspaper that in 1912 was just another New York daily. Although he had no way of knowing it, Van Anda had just claimed a position of preeminence for the
New York Times
among American newspapers which it would not relinquish for the rest of the century.

But while the
New York Times
was prepared to announce in its latest edition that the
Titanic
had sunk, based on the prolonged silence of her wireless, no other editor was willing to follow Carr Van Anda’s lead. Consequently the White Star offices were besieged by reporters seeking additional information.

At first, Phillip Franklin was confident, telling his questioners, “We place absolute confidence in the
Titanic
. We believe that the boat is unsinkable.” At the same time though, as rumors were gaining strength and doubts began to grow, he was having messages sent addressed to Captain Smith, asking for information about the ship and its passengers.

Yet the story being told to the public sounded so convincing. The myth that the
Titanic
was unsinkable had been repeated so many times by so many different sources that it had become accepted as a truth. It was impossible to imagine that any serious accident had happened to her. When the
Evening Sun
ran a banner-sized headline that declared “ALL SAVED FROM
TITANIC
AFTER COLLISION,” the paper was merely giving voice to what the public—and White Star officials—believed to be true. The latest story had it that the
Titanic
’s passengers were being transferred to the
Parisian
and the
Carpathia
, while the
Virginian
took the wounded liner in tow, bound for Halifax.

The White Star Line’s positive posture was maintained all through the day of April 15. True, Franklin admitted to reporters, there were rumors that the
Titanic
had sunk and that the loss of life was heavy, but these were rumors, not reliable news. Wireless operators—in some cases amateurs—were catching snippets of transmissions and relaying them on. The news they were hearing wasn’t good. But the ships actually involved, actually
there
, the
Carpathia
, the
Virginian
, the
Parisian
and others, weren’t within wireless range yet, so for news as important as this, Franklin understandably wasn’t willing to settle for second- or third-hand information.

When the official word came at 6:15 p.m., it was like a body blow to Franklin: the
Olympic
, her transmission delayed for some hours by technical problems, reported that the
Titanic
had sunk at 2:20 a.m., with more than 1,000 passengers still aboard; the survivors had been rescued by the
Carpathia
and were being brought to New York. It took nearly three-quarters of an hour before Franklin could muster the self-control he needed to face reporters. With his anguish visibly playing across his face, he told them, “Gentlemen, I regret to say that the
Titanic
sank at 2:20 this morning.”

That was all he would—or could—say at the moment. It is remarkable that he was able to hold onto his composure for so long, but gradually he admitted that the report “neglected to say that all the crew had been saved,” then later that “probably a number of lives had been lost,” which eventually became “we very much fear there has been a great loss of life.” At 9:00 p.m. Franklin broke down completely. Sobbing, he told the stunned reporters that there had been a “horrible loss of life”—it would be possible, he said, to replace the ship, but “never the human lives.”

In the years to come critics would have harsh words to say about Franklin’s apparent lack of candor with the press. Some would hint, for instance, that he had withheld confirmation of the
Titanic
’s loss until after trading had ceased on Wall Street for the day, allowing IMM shareholders with inside knowledge to sell off stock which was sure to plunge in value the next day. Yet it’s difficult to give too much credence to the idea. So many rumors, half-truths, and theories were flying about on April 15 that Franklin’s restraint in making any announcement until the truth was confirmed appears more admirable than sinister. Garbled, incomplete, and sometimes irrelevant messages were being picked up by wireless operators up and down the Eastern Seaboard, each one being given varying degrees of credence by the Eastern press, and adding to the confusion. The best example of this was how the story that the
Titanic
was being towed to Halifax after her passengers had been safely transferred to other ships got its start: two garbled messages about incidents involving other ships, which had nothing to do at all with the
Titanic
, were somehow thrown together and reported as the latest news about the stricken White Star liner.

And at the same time it’s difficult not to feel a certain sympathy for Franklin once the truth was known: here was disaster on an unprecedented scale, an event so huge that it was difficult to assimilate. Close to a century later, after two world wars, numerous smaller wars, police actions, and global terrorism, humanity has become, if not desensitized, then at least resigned to death on a massive scale. In 1912, all the horrors of the 20th century were still to come, and the Edwardian world was still in so many ways naive and innocent. That so many people—and soon word on the street was that the death toll had reached 1,200 (no one yet suspected that it would climb still higher)—could lose their lives in a single stroke of fate was nearly unimaginable. It was, in Walter Lord’s memorable phrase, “as if an entire small town had been wiped off the map.” It should come as no surprise, then, that Franklin struggled to communicate the truth to the press. It was so devastating that he could barely manage to comprehend it himself.

Nonetheless, news began to trickle in, especially when Cottam and Bride aboard the
Carpathia
began transmitting lists of survivors along with their personal messages. As their messages arrived at the White Star offices in New York, messengers quickly brought it to men who were standing by outside, chalk in hand, ready to post the latest news on hastily erected chalkboards set up ten or more feet above the street, so that the growing crowds could read it for themselves. Similar chalkboards appeared above the offices of most of New York’s newspapers.

People had begun gathering in front of the White Star offices around 10:00 a.m. on April 15, just a few hours after the morning papers broke the news of the
Titanic
’s accident. Some of those gathered were relatives of passengers on board the ship, others were friends, some were mere curiosity seekers. A few family members were admitted into the building—Ben Guggenheim’s wife; John Jacob Astor’s son, Vincent; Astor’s father-in-law, W.H. Force—along with a handful of influential people who had a particular interest in the fate of the ship, among them J.P. Morgan. When they emerged from Franklin’s office, their faces would be grim; Vincent Astor left in tears. The crowd outside the White Star building began to fear the worst, and the word soon spread across the city, then into the rest of the country.

A few more days would pass before it became clear how bad the loss really was—and it was very bad. Captain Rostron’s muster had shown that he had 705 survivors aboard the
Carpathia
— but there had been 2,207 passengers and crew aboard the
Titanic
when she struck the iceberg. When the numbers were written down, the sums added up, the “t’s” crossed and the “i’s” dotted, 1,502 people had lost their lives. In First Class, 123 passengers out of 325 died; in Second Class the figure was 167 out of 285; in Third Class, there had been 706 aboard and 528 were lost. That so many more Third Class passengers had been lost in proportion to their First or Second Class counterparts would soon lead social critics to lay charges of discrimination against the White Star Line, echoes of which, however strained or unfounded, can still be heard today.